THE 1997 ELECTIONS: CONGRESS

THE 1997 ELECTIONS: CONGRESS; Republican Wins U.S. House Seat Left by Molinari

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: November 5, 1997

In a race that escalated into a battle attracting national attention, Vito J. Fossella Jr., a 32-year-old City Councilman, was elected last night to the seat in Congress representing Staten Island. Mr. Fossella's victory capped a frenzied race in which the Republicans fought vigorously to retain the seat the party has held for 16 years, most recently by Susan Molinari.

Mr. Fossella, whose campaign brought out Republican stalwarts from former President George Bush to Gov. George E. Pataki, defeated Eric N. Vitaliano, a 15-year member of the state Assembly, who had received strong support from labor unions and a multitude of Democratic officials, most notably President Clinton.

It was the nation's only open Congressional seat, left vacant when Ms. Molinari resigned to become a television anchorwoman for a CBS morning news program.

A jubilant Mr. Fossella gave a rousing victory speech in a catering hall in the West Brighton section of Staten Island.

''I made a commitment to the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn that I will go down to Washington to be a strong independent voice,'' Mr. Fossella said, standing with his parents and his wife, Mary Patricia, who is expecting the couple's second child.

''The message is that the Government works for the people and not the other way around,'' Mr. Fossella said.

Speaking to supporters in another hall just 10 blocks from Mr. Fossella's victory party, Mr. Vitaliano conceded the election, standing with his wife, Helen, and their three young children.

In an interview, Mr. Vitaliano said, ''I'm content that we ran the race we had to run. But it would have been great if we had had a million and a half bucks like they did.''

He attributed his defeat in part to the weak support in the district for the Democratic mayoral candidate, Ruth W. Messinger.

''Democrats were not excited by Ruth or Rudy,'' he said, ''and decided to stay home.''

Mr. Fossella campaigned on a theme of lowering taxes and reducing the role of government.

In the end, Mr. Fossella's showing resulted from a number of factors. Mr. Fossella shared the Republican line with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been immensely popular among voters in the 13th Congressional District, which includes all of Staten Island and the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst.

In addition, Mr. Fossella spent heavily -- more than $1.5 million by some accounts -- in a race that included more than $750,000 in television ads paid for by the Republican National Committee. Those ads, which did not mention Mr. Fossella by name, offered harsh attacks on Mr. Vitaliano, depicting him as a proponent of higher taxes.

The television ads also helped Mr. Fossella to offer an image of himself as a young, energetic campaigner and a defender of conservative values in a district that, despite a nearly two-to-one Democratic edge in voter registration, has frequently voted for Republican candidates.

In many ways, there was as much interest in the race in the corridors of Washington as in the streets of the working-class district. The Republican Party sent a team of workers to Staten Island to assist the Fossella campaign. But it also re-energized the political machine of Guy V. Molinari, the Staten Island Borough President, who referred to Mr. Fossella as his son.

Indeed, that advertising blitz created one of the biggest controversies of the campaign. Mr. Vitaliano repeatedly complained that the party's ads were virtually identical to those paid for by Mr. Fossella's campaign and therefore represented an improper use of so-called soft money, which is not subject to the same limits as campaign fund-raising and is supposed to be used to benefit the party in general, rather than a particular candidate.

In response, Mr. Fossella's campaign insisted that the spending was legitimate since the ads discussed Mr. Vitaliano's record, rather than Mr. Fossella's.

Mr. Fossella was elected to the City Council in 1994 in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Alfred Cerullo 3d, who took a job as a commissioner in the Giuliani administration. Mr. Fossella is a product of family that is well known in Staten Island political circles. His father, Vito J. Fossella, was chairman of the city's Board of Standards in the Koch administration. His uncle, Frank Fossella, is a Democrat who served on the City Council for four years, until he was defeated by Ms. Molinari in 1985.

Throughout the campaign, Mr. Fossella invoked Mr. Giuliani's name in his speeches, referring to the Mayor as his ''teammate'' and asking voters to support ''the Giuliani-Fossella team.''

The stakes were perhaps higher for the Republicans, who had represented the district since 1981, after Guy V. Molinari defeated John M. Murphy, a nine-term incumbent whose campaign was hobbled by his indictment in the Abscam bribery scandal. Since then the seat had been in the Molinari family, with Mr. Molinari's daughter, Susan, winning the seat in 1990, after her father's election as Borough President in 1989.

To draw attention to the race, Mr. Molinari called in many of his old friends from his days in Congress, including Mr. Bush, former Senator Bob Dole and several other members of Congress.